


Don't Judge a Book

by SegaBarrett



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 04:04:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14824926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Juggling high school and being a superhero has never been harder, but Dana's just found a new ally... maybe.





	Don't Judge a Book

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nerissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/gifts).



I chewed on my pencil and rocked in my chair. I couldn’t believe it – there was finally a bonefide happening in the town of Falling Rock and I was missing it in Saturday detention.

Everyone had been talking about it. We had an actual supervillain trying to take over, and someone had to stop her. The mayor had been useless – he just kept issuing press releases about how he would look into it, and the cops were already strapped following up on truancy reports for the end of the year. 

It had been my own fault, at least to a certain extent. I had been trying to get into the school library to do research on the latest threat to the town, but I hadn’t been given a library pass – I couldn’t exactly tell a teacher about my secret identity. So at lunch I had slipped away and made it into the library, and was reading the only book about the dangers of Buckingham gas, and finding the only antidote that was available in the tri-state area. Then the door had burst open and my blonde foe had emerged.

“Dana Clark!”

I dove under the table and hoped that my small frame wouldn’t be recognizable, that I could fade behind one of the podiums that had been set up around the library for looking at dictionaries or giving impromptu speeches or whatever people used podiums for in their everyday life. 

“I see you down there!”

I could see her feet – she had big feet. She was a heavyset woman, and her hair was always impeccably curled. She also had a bellowing voice and a nose like a bloodhound for when I was in the library. 

I wondered what would happen if I just resolved to stay down here until my next class, but I worried that she might actually come down and pull me out. 

So I shuffled back and stood up, crossing my arms as she told me, “I have told you a hundred times, you cannot enter the library if you do not have a pass! You’re finally in real trouble now.”

And I was. I was sitting right smack in Saturday detention. Oh, that part? It had just been regular detention until I had thrown up my middle finger high as I walked back to class. 

The supervillains could be hard at work and I was stuck here until noon. Why couldn’t I control my temper? That was the bad part of being a superhero. 

“May I use the restroom?” I asked. Maybe if I could slip out for a little while, I could come up with a plan.  
The man at the front gruffly gave me my request, and I walked as slowly as possible to the nearest bathroom, choosing the stall where someone had ripped a toilet seat off of a toilet. I crouched in the corner and took a breath. 

I reached behind the beleaguered toilet until my hands rubbed against something. That was it – duct tape! I pulled slowly and found myself staring at a small flip phone; maybe one of the last still in existence.

I placed it against my ear, wondering if the hall monitor worked Saturdays. I wondered what her name even was, and if it was bad that I didn’t know her name and just thought of her as “hall monitor lady”. If I was going to be a proper superhero, I was going to need to start working on my people skills.

But first I needed to call in someone to stop the villain.

***

I had been banned from the school library for the next month; that was the agreement I had come to in order to stop my Saturday detentions, which seemed unfair considering the actual librarian didn’t have any issue with me.

But I didn’t have much of a choice, if I wanted my Saturdays free again. 

I had a paper due for English class, and I couldn’t work on it at home with baby Alicia wailing her head off all the time, and thanks to the hall monitor I couldn’t do it at school either. I would have to come up with a solution, and what I settled on was the Falling Rock Public Library.

It was located six blocks from my house, and the closest landmark was a tiny bodega that had once been a pizza shop. I had hung out there playing on the internet and getting into disturbing chat rooms when I had been a preteen. It felt so long ago.

They hadn’t changed much. There were still bikes parked out front, along with a single lonely Razor scooter. There was still the big metal box for book returns.   
I pulled open the door and stepped into the lobby, then moved into the main library. It was cold inside, as if someone had taken the air conditioner and cranked it up to “11” to prove they could withstand it.

“Hey, how can I help you?”

I heard the voice before I saw the person who owned it. There was a short, slight girl with a caramel complexion and her hair pulled into one long braid behind her head. 

“Oh, I was just looking for some books,” I said, which was entirely unhelpful considering I was surrounded by them. 

“You came to the right place.”

I let out a short, nervous laugh and looked at her again. I hadn’t seen her before – maybe she went to my school but if she did, she definitely wasn’t in my grade. I would have noticed her before.

“I’m Dana,” I told her, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. Nothing was going on that required me to give me her name, and it wasn’t even my real name anyway. Not the name that mattered when things went down for real.

The girl flashed a small smile. 

“I’m Hannah. I just got the job here yesterday.” She crossed her arms in front of herself and I noted, also, her tiny leather jacket and khaki pants. It was odd to think of her as tiny considering I was short, too – she must have been 4’11 to my 5’3 – but she seemed proportionally pint-sized in an odd way. 

I had been staring at her for far too long by now.

“Do you go Falling Rock High?” I asked.

“Oh, no. I go to Bishop,” she said, referring to Catholic school around the corner from me. “I mean, I just started. My family just moved here.” She spoke in fits and starts, seeming to come up with all of it on the fly. Her head darted around nervously, and she shuffled back behind the counter before I managed to respond.

“Oh, Catholic school, huh? Lots of Catholics there,” I stated, having apparently decided to add nothing of value to the conversation.

She laughed, then coughed, then looked around and back at me again.

I should keep on walking and go get my book, I considered. But my feet didn’t seem to want to move; all the same, my voice was not coming up with anything to declare.

“Anyway, I need to go find these books,” I said pointlessly. “Where’s the library computer?”

“We still use card catalogs, actually,” Hannah said. “It’s kind of… quaint, but that’s what they chose to go with.” She led me over to a tall, wooden cabinet and pulled out a drawer. “What are you looking for?”

Her shoulder brushed against mine, and for a second my mind rushed with a sudden panic, as if there was somewhere I needed to be, but I couldn’t remember. 

“Oh, I mean… my paper is about the Vietnam War,” I said. “Were these card catalogs around back then?”

Hannah laughed and pulled open the one labeled “V”. 

“Probably,” she said, then paused. “Wait, haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

My fingers felt cold and I swallowed. Had she seen me on a mission? That wasn’t something that could happen. I made a point of only appearing in places where no one knew me so that no one could put two and two together.

If my father found out, I didn’t know what he would do. Worry, likely, or forbid me from doing this, or even cry. Nothing that I wanted, and nothing I could work with.

“Probably not,” I told her, “But I have one of those faces. They told me I have a doppleganger down at the Food Lion.”

She laughed, turning her head to ask me something else, and her mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear her, only the sound of glass shattering and then, above the din, laughter.

There was smoke floating above us, and I shoved Hannah, hard, behind the first row of books I saw. 

“Oh my God,” she whispered to me, and I swallowed hard. Should I scream? Yell? Act like a normal person before I knew what this was?

Even though I knew what this was. 

“What’s going on?” she whispered, and I had to stop myself from slamming a hand over her mouth, because that was a thing people did in movies and it was something that would likely get me bit in real life.

Movies always got it wrong.

“Stay here,” I told her, my voice bursting out with way more firmness than I felt. It was disorienting and I could only hear a ringing in my ears. They’d caught me unaware again, and I should have known better – a hero can never let her guard down.

“Stay here? Wait… but where are you going?” Hannah asked.

“To figure out what’s going on,” I told her. 

“Nothing good.”

I shrugged.

“Just stay here. Don’t get hurt!” I told her, and I pulled open the nearest door (it seemed to go to some sort of a conference room, maybe where they had book clubs or book sales or other events beginning with “book”) to duck inside. My backpack was still hanging on my back, and that was a relief. I unzipped it and pulled out a long piece of cloth with several pockets on it. 

My suit. My super suit.

It was a bright red and yellow, with stars on the back, an example of taking a place where something had happened and running with it, perhaps unwisely.  
The place I had gotten my powers hadn’t been a radioactive spider farm or a truck full of toxic chemicals over a highway.  
It had been in the fifth row of the last West Coast Video in our town. When I’d been younger, there had been four or five of them between here and Baltimore, but the company seemed to have gone out of business a few years back. I’d found the last one and had been flipping through some horror movies, trying to find the movie I had wanted to see for years about a girl who could go after her bullies with snakes she controlled with her mind.

And then the whole place had…

But now was no time for a trip down memory lane. Westboundia was on the case.

***

I buttoned up the front of my cap and sucked in a breath. Hopefully Hannah was still okay – should I have left her there while I ran in here, or should I have stayed with her? I didn’t have time to worry about it.

I walked down the hall, which was now covered with saw dust and white scraps of paint that must have fallen from the ceiling when it caved in.

There was an orange glow illuminating where the front entrance had once been, and at the center of it was the person that I knew I would fine.

“The Secretary,” I grumbled, nails digging into my legs as I walked forward, seeing if I could move up to her before she got a good look at me. I’d gone up against her once before. 

She was tall – nearly six foot – and her outfit was enclosed entirely in steel. I’d dubbed her “the secretary” first, and everyone else had followed suit. I’d named her for the huge, spiked pen that emanated from her armored chest.

I suppose I could have called her the Writer, but I wanted to be a writer. And anyway, calling her the Secretary really seemed to piss her off.

“Westboundia,” she growled. “We meet again.”

“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”

It was a dumb taunt, but it was the first one to come into my mind.

I also needed a weapon.

I looked around and saw, on the ground, a credit-card imprinter machine – my mind told me that that must be for people with some pretty hefty fines on books – and held it up, grabbing it around the long side and sucking in a breath. 

“I’m fed up with your crap, Secretary,” I hissed.

“That’s not my name!” she fired back, extending her arm. I saw an orb of green light flow from her hand, and I watched as my own arm extended to meet the light with the credit-card imprinter. It bounced back and hit the woman in her chest. 

Yeah, well, mine isn’t Dana Flark, either, but that didn’t stop three teachers from thinking it was my name this week.

“You think you can defeat me?” the Secretary growled, reaching down with her huge armored arms. “You are sadly mistaken…”

“Why are you attacking a library?” I asked, putting my arm on my hip. Maybe I grew a little overconfident in that moment, and maybe I didn’t check right behind me the way that I should have.

The next thing I knew I was on my back, in the middle of the library again, covered in sawdust.

***

“Hey! Hey, is someone down there?” I heard a voice calling, and it took me a few moments for all the darkness to drift away to where I could identify the voice – it was Hannah, Hannah all over again, the one I had instructed to stay still while I handled everything.

So much for that, today at least. 

“Hannah!” I let myself whisper, before I bit down on my lip. She didn’t know Westboundia; hell, she barely knew Dana. I was blowing my cover and shooting myself in the foot all at the same time. I needed to get back into the fight and put the Secretary back in whatever front office she belonged in.

I began to push the rubble off of me, even as Hannah asked again, “Hey, you down there! Can I do anything to help? Are you trapped? Do you need a dog or something?”

I didn’t answer and continued pushing upwards, until I was standing on the rubble and looking at Hannah with a sheepish look – one that was hopefully at least a little obscured by my mask.

“Thank you for offering to help… but you should go hide. It isn’t safe.”

She stared at me, mouth a little bit open.

“What are you supposed to be?” she asked, “Like Superman or something?”

“I’m not Superman,” I fired back, “I’m Westboundia. I’m Falling Rock’s only superhero. I got my powers at the last surviving West Coast Video.”

“Then why aren’t you West-Coast-Dia?” Hannah asked.

“Westboundia sounded better, okay, now duck!”

I jumped over and knocked her out of the way of another stream of green light; this one hit a long wooden table and turned it into shambles.

“Oh no!” Hannah exclaimed, “That’s where we were going to have the study tables!”

I stared at her, because study tables were really not the most vital thing right now. I had to figure out what I was going to pull out of thin air in order to defeat The Secretary.

There were things that I could do, but they were going to hurt more than just her. 

And a hero never hurt anyone on purpose. That’s what I always told myself, the thing I had repeated in my head over and over since my powers had found me, not the other way around. 

That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to stop purposely being a real pain in the ass, though. 

I extended my fingers, causing a light to explode directly behind where the Secretary was standing. It had been a wonder that any lights had survived in the carnage, and, well, there went that one. Maybe I could write an anonymous letter to the newspaper to hopefully convince people to donate for the repairs.

The Secretary yelled out and stepped back. 

Directly into the fire house being shot directly at her, propelling her forward into my forcefield despite her iron armor.

“Let’s see who you really are!” I declared loudly, though over the sound of the firehose and general pandemonium no one could really hear me. Except for her.

“Not today!” I heard her growl, and she pivoted and ran off in a third direction – directly between the two forces and off down the main highway in a sprint that I wouldn’t have thought possible given the whole metal suit thing she had going on.

The downside to some people getting powers seemed to be that everybody was getting some powers. Some people were choosing not to show it – like the psychic Domino’s guy who somehow always still messed up my order – but others were beginning to experiment, beginning to find something in the anonymity and power that being different allowed.

Not everyone was using it for good, as the wanton library destruction was proving. But why was this woman back again? Was it something about me in particular, or was it just a matter of coincidence? Maybe there was just nothing better to do here in Falling Rock.

I sighed and looked around at the half-destroyed library. I was never going to get my work done now, but that seemed secondary.

I looked over at Hannah, who was still staring with her mouth open. 

“Who are you?” she asked. She looked a little bit frightened, and I wondered how much of the destruction she blamed me for. 

I’d need to figure out how to be a superhero without leaving quite so much of a mess everywhere. But it seemed to be easier to tear things down than to build them up, whether hero or villain.

“I’m Westboundia,” I told her. 

“And who was that?”

“That was this lady… I called her the Secretary, because it’s like when you call the world’s rudest doctor’s office and someone just yells at you for scheduling an appointment.”

She laughed.

“We better find everyone else and make sure they’re okay,” she said, and I nodded awkwardly. I couldn’t stay here, dressed like this. Westboundia only made brief appearances and then ran off into the night. The longer Westboundia stuck around, the more and more that Dana might slip up from inside her and show herself.

And no one wanted to see Dana. No one needed Dana rushing in and causing trouble. 

“Hannah, I just need to duck back around for a second, but I’ll be right over…”

“How did you know my name was Hannah?”

“…Just a guess.”

Hannah looked at me, cocking her head to the side and then shaking her head a little bit.

“Well, I’m not going to sit there waiting for you,” she said, firmly but without anger. “You can catch up with me. I have to go see if the head librarian is around her somewhere. I was supposed to clock out at nine.”

“I think it’s past nine,” I told her. 

I began to shuffle, which turned into an awkward run, and my feet were about to fall completely out of my shoes if I didn’t do something about it. I needed to get back to being Dana, because when I was Dana the stakes weren’t nearly so high. Dana could be stupid and clueless and weird and obnoxious, and no one’s fate would rely on her knowing what to do.

On getting it right.

I walked over to the still-standing bathroom and pulled the door back, went in and changed back into my boring Dana-clothes. I walked out and swallowed hard, walking back towards where Hannah was already digging through rubble and calling “Ms. Danforth?”

I walked over and told her, “Hey. Did I miss something? I was just in the bathroom.”

***

They rebuilt the library, though it took them a few weeks. I handed my paper in a week late and got a C- minus with a “needs work” scrolled across the top in glaring red pen.

I was out late most nights – Falling Rock had more crime than anybody really thought it did, and I needed to be back before the recently imposed ten o’clock curfew.

My stepmother approached me three weeks before the end of the semester, walked in my room, and shut the door.

“What have you been doing? You never talk to us.”

“Listen, Kari,” I said, realizing it sounded dumb as soon as I started to say it, “I’m busy with stuff that you don’t really understand. And I wish I could tell you… but I can’t.”

She sighed. 

“Is this that goth stuff again? Because I was really respectful of it the first go-around but I don’t think I can deal with it again.”

“I’m not a goth again. Although, let me tell you, my fashion sense and music sense has always been awesome. But no, I’m not out doing drugs or anything. Just trust me, okay?”

She put her hand on her hip.

“I’ll trust you, but I expect that you’re going to tell me about what you’re doing one of these days…”

“I promise. As soon as it’s the right time.” I sat up, letting out a sigh. There never would be a right day to tell her about who I was, who I could be. She wouldn’t ever believe me and if she did believe me, she would tell me to stop, tell me that it was too dangerous and that I should let someone else risk their life. That I should do something safe like join the 4H club. 

“I’ll hold you to it.”

She walked out of the room, and I wondered again why I let her and my dad worry all the time. Was this superhero thing even worth it? Maybe there were better heroes, big city heroes, who could come in and do everything that needed to be done.

After all, it wasn’t until now that it began to hit me – if I stayed in Falling Rock, if I stayed as Westboundia, then I could never go away to college. I could probably never get married – could superheroes get married? (Tell my husband I’d be late home from work, out fighting crime?) 

Maybe the answer should have always been to hand it over to someone else. To not answer the call.

If only it could be that easy. 

I opened up my Happy Bunny journal and began to make a list of all the villains I’d defeated over the past year.

The list got cramped around the edges and ran into the margins, tumbling and somersaulting over itself like it was in a rush to get away. But was it in a rush to get away from Westboundia (stupid name, I told myself, flight of fancy), or from Dana?

***

The library’s grand re-opening event was advertised in a huge poster that was placed in the “community announcements” bulletin board at the TNT Grocery Store, the corner store at the end of my block.

It offered pony rides (I was curious to know how they were going to get the pony in the library, or whether this would be outside), face painting, and, of course, a book sale. I expressed my displeasure to anyone who would listen that there wasn’t going to be a moon bounce. Every good event deserved a solid moon bounce.

I walked out of my house and down the road, wondering if it was weird for me to show up there after everything that had happened. Maybe I had more of a part in the wanton destruction of reading than I’d like to admit – maybe it was also all my fault for just using Overdrive a lot recently. 

I had pulled back my hair into a long braid, and I still didn’t know why I had spent so much time actually paying attention to my appearance. When I was Dana, it was usually an afterthought – as long as I wasn’t accidentally out wearing the suit at school, who cared?

But today it was different, and I didn’t totally understand how. 

Was it Hannah who I was checking on my appearance for? What was I going to do about that if it was?

There wasn’t a whole lot of time to think about it, because I pushed open the heavy black door and stepped into the lobby. There was a man at one of the study desks making balloon animals for children but refusing to look at them as he did so. Off to another side, there were a few different baked goods for sale.

And behind the desk…

“Hi Dana,” Hannah said brightly, leaning across the desk. “I wasn’t sure if I would see you here after all that crazy stuff that happened last time.”

One of her braids seemed to be floating in the wind, and I watched it, slightly fascinated by the way that it seemed to levitate of its own accord. Or maybe that was just the weird light behind it.

“Dana?” she asked again, and I managed to look at her and open my mouth.

“Hi Hannah… Well, I had to come back. There’s pony rides.”

She laughed.

“Well, that there are. I’m glad I’m working today. I get to see the whole… event. I mean, it’s pretty corny but… you know. They’re desperate.”

“I think there should be a moon bounce,” I told her.

“I do too. But you know what I’m really hoping for?” she told me.

“What?”

“An appearance from Falling Rock’s only superhero.”

I proceeded to choke on my own air for a moment. What was I supposed to say to that? Was she being sarcastic? Did she know who I was and she was just messing with me? 

“What? Huh? A superhero?” I asked, intelligently.

“Oh yeah. There was a superhero who came in here after that what’s-her-face blew up half the library. She fought her and everything. It was very exciting.” There was a twinkle in her eye, and now I was beginning to think – she knew, she had to know. She had to have figured it out, and maybe that was because it should have been obvious to everyone who was paying even a little bit of attention to both Dana and Westboundia.

I guess that one person had just been Hannah Gray.

“Exciting, huh?” I asked. “So you want her to show up?”

“Maybe.” 

She picked up a book from the cart in the back and began handing it back and forth. I could see that it was The Man in the Iron Mask.

“You know, I think I’ve heard of her. I think… I think I’ve heard she’s pretty cool,” I said.

“I’ve heard that too. But… you know, I think I like you better.”

Hannah looked at me as if she hadn’t quite meant to say it like that, and she looked back over and flipped open the book for just a minute.

“I think she likes you too,” I told her. “When’s your lunch break? Are you going to get on a pony ride?”

“Maybe I can clock out for a little while…”

***

“That wasn’t as exciting as I thought it was going to be,” Hannah said as she hopped off the tiny horse, using her hand to grab my shoulder as she did. “I kind of thought that pony was going to do a lot more. I wanted it to be like, Black Beauty or something.”

I grinned.

“Well, they just brought out the rookie horses, I guess.”

There was a long pause before she said, “So… Westboundia, huh? How did you come up with that as your fake name?”

“It was honestly the first thing that popped into my head. But I mean, I guess I’m stuck with it now, right?”

Hannah had stepped ever closer to me, and she wasn’t moving away. My heart was beating faster. 

“Well, it’s good press for West Coast Video, I guess,” she said, “Do they give you a stipend every time your origin story is mentioned, or something?”

“I don’t think they’re actually around anymore. It’s depressing. I think it’s just that one that’s left.”

“You’re a relic.”

She leaned in and pressed a kiss to my cheek.

I sheepishly pulled back and smiled at her. 

“Excuse me! Excuse me!”

A tall woman in a navy-blue coat walked down the dirt road next to us and nearly knocked me into the pony. 

My eyes flashed. If I were Westboundia right now…

“Is Dana Clark here?” she snarled a second later, and I blinked at her.

“That’s me,” I said, and I wanted to add “stranger danger” after it but didn’t get the chance before she cut me off.

“I’m her Aunt Val,” she said with a swish of her purse. “I mean, your Aunt Val. I don’t know if you remember me. I was your mother’s oldest sister. Oh, you look just like her.”

She did look familiar, like an image from a dream.

Hannah took a step closer to me.

“I’m Hannah,” she spoke up. 

Aunt Val ignored her. 

“It’s so crazy to see you after all these years. Someone told me you would probably be here, that you’re always at the library. They just rebuilt this place, is that right?”

“Yeah, there was an incident,” Hannah told her.

“So what brings you here, Aunt Val?” I asked. 

“Well, I just moved here and I had to get acquainted with my niece. My sweet little Dana. It’s been too many years. I’m working as a receptionist at that doctor’s office right down the road.”

“You mean, like a secretary?” I asked, reaching out to pet the pony.

Her eyes flashed.

“I’m not a secretary. I’m a receptionist.”

I looked at Hannah and chewed on my lip. This could be interesting… Very interesting indeed.


End file.
